Oxford Brookes University

War, the whirlpool of society that brings in all manner of young men to fight a war they not always wanted to fight. In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, the matter is taken into depth for the author himself was one such person in his youth. The life of a soldier and that of a civilian are so apart from one another, which it’s impossible to assume the transition between either one an easy one. As a soldier, every day could be your last in the field, a stray bullet, a forgotten…

Both poems are about a character having an accident and one (out out) results in a death of a young boy and the other (disabled) results in the soldier losing some of his limbs. We sympathise about the characters in the poems for different reasons. An example for ‘disabled’ is showed by how the soldiers’ life changes massively after the incident he had and lost his limbs. On the other hand in ‘out out’ where the boy has lived a tragic life and has died by an incident where he caught his hand in…

Itane tam dulcis est?: Comparing “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Facing It” What image comes to mind when one hears the word, “soldier?” Usually, something akin to Captain America is the image many people imagine. A young, strong, and heroic man who seems like an indomitable force ready to face any threat. Sometimes, that image is correct, but usually only at the beginning of a war. The image rarely remains as soon as combat is entered. That is what “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and…

World War I was one of the biggest and deadliest wars in history. A lot of lives were lost and it was an emotional time. With this emotion, came beautiful art in many forms including poetry. There were many poets inspired by World War I, three of them being, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and John McCrae. All three served and died during the war but they left behind poems that will never be forgotten. Wilfred Owen wrote, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” in 1917; Isaac Rosenberg wrote, “Break of Day in…

Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen , “Hell Broke Luce” by Tom Waits, and “The Words That Maketh Murder” by PJ Harvey have a common theme, war. These poems use the point of view of a soldier. A soldier is young man or woman that fights to protect the place/country they call home. Many soldiers experience different things, but all the experienced come from the same general area. Combat troops are the ones that experience the worst of it because they are forced to see many of their friends and…

Hayden Carruth is an American poet who wrote during the twentieth century-modernism movement. He served in World War II and uses a lot of his personal experiences in his writing (Contemporary Authors Online). In “None,” Carruth is able to use many different allusions to show the speaker’s underlying regret for not showing his friend off properly. Carruth uses images, irony, and allusions to show the speaker’s remorse and regret to how his friend was treated. Carruth uses images of the…

YEAR 12 ENGLISH “UNIVERSAL THEMES” - REPRESENTATIONS OF WAR: PLANNING Poem Chosen: Anthem for Doomed Youth Write a paragraph summarising the representation of war being presented in your poem and the main ways in which it is shown. The poem represents war as depressing and futile. The representation of how horrific war is, can be construed from the title itself. It conveys a strong feeling for the reader and foreshadows what the poem will consist of. Usually an anthem is a stirring song…

Inspired by the events of the 1991 Gulf War, Gillian Clarke’s Lament effectively describes the impacts of war on the surrounding environment and wildlife. Although written specifically about the Gulf War, the message of the poem can be applied to the present day - using only words, Clarke paints a vivid picture of the effect of humanity’s behaviour on nature and its inhabitants. Similarly, Boey Kim Cheng’s Report to Wordsworth illustrates the extent of the damage done to the environment. Written…

Both Wilfred Owen and Seamus Heaney present the power of nature in their poems “Exposure” and “Storm on the Island”, respectively, as overwhelming and uncontrollable. Between the two, they both emphasize nature as an unparalleled power, however, Owen’s poem is a visual representation of life in the trenches of WW1, contrasting from existing government propaganda glamorising the adventures of war and emphasizing the futility of the situation by depicting the fate of soldiers suffering from…

At first glance, The Things They Carried seems like a collection of one man's war stories. But this novel is full of so much more, it talks about love, loss, and recovery. The author, Tim O'Brien, being a veteran of the war himself, used his writing as a way to cope with the trauma he experienced. O'Brien connects these themes though the use of conceit. Conceit is the likening of two very opposite things through figurative language in stories. for example, love and war are completely different,…